Let's Chat with Will & Tony
Let's Chat with Will & Tony
Embracing Life's Challenges: SEG 2 of 2: Cultivating Resilience, Personal Responsibility, and Joy in Relationships
When life throws a curveball, are we equipped with the emotional armor to hit it out of the park? Tony and I recently sat down to tackle the hefty subjects of resiliency and mental toughness, crucial tools for navigating the bumpy road to happiness. We dove into heartwarming tales of early pioneers whose steadfast vision and faith were their compass through the unknown, drawing a powerful parallel for today's vision-seekers. Our discussion ventured into how embracing a higher power can catalyze monumental change, a theme commonly witnessed in recovery programs, and we championed the radical notion of taking absolute ownership of our happiness.
Have you ever considered that the true key to a lasting relationship might be focusing more on our contributions than our partner's flaws? That's precisely the vein we tapped into, highlighting the indispensable role of personal responsibility in cementing the foundation of our life and love stories. We shared anecdotes about maintaining joy in the midst of trials and tribulations, and dissected the destructive nature of blame, justification, and making excuses. Honesty, we agreed, is the bedrock of personal growth and joy - and we left no stone unturned in exploring its value.
This week's heart-to-heart was a rallying cry for bolstering resilience, not just in ourselves but within the fabric of our relationships. We compared the no-excuses mindset of pilots to the trust cultivated or crushed in the cockpit of marriage, illustrating how avoidance of responsibility can lead to an erosion of trust. We didn't shy away from the tough talk necessary to fortify those bonds, and we stressed the importance of teaching resilience to our children, preparing them for a fulfilling life, rich with happiness. Remember to catch us again next week as we continue to chart the course toward finding joy in every facet of our lives.
Common Sense Advice for Life. Let's chat Now. Here's Will Kesley and Tony Peck. Hello again, welcome back to the show. I'm Will Kesley and this is Tony Peck my buddy Tony Peck, it's called. Let's Chat with Will and Tony. Today we're chatting about resiliency and mental toughness Mental toughness and why it is missing in today's society and what we can do to bring it back. It is kind of the root to happiness, don't you think? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I mean being resilient. You have to be Life's hard. I mean we all know life's hard and life can either get better or you can get better right All these things life throws at us. Every you know, half the times I show up at the studio and I look over at Will and go wow, this has been a tough week and because, yeah, life's throwing stuff at us.
Speaker 1:but we can have fun learning from it. We can have fun, you know, in my life, particularly when I was having the cancer fight, I found myself reading journal entries from particular things like pioneers, the early pioneers that settled the Western States out here, and I found that these people walked with no shoes, no food, pushing hand carts yeah right, all because they wanted to have religious freedom Just a God given right to have in America, with a constitution that's supposed to guarantee that, and the resiliency they had. And I thought how did they do that? It's such a tough thing. I can't imagine putting all my possessions in a cart and pushing with my family and having members of my family die on the way and still keep pointing and going because we have this resiliency. What was in their soul that gave them that strength?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the underlying, I think the underlying piece of that is clarity of understanding what they wanted in their life. The resiliency came from. I know what I want and this is a step to go get it. This is just a step I have to go through because what's on the other side is what I need and want and highly desire in my life. And you look at people who are very religious or very clear on their purpose in life or have that clarity of this is what I want.
Speaker 2:They end up being then be grounded, and it doesn't matter what life throws at them, because they know what they are, they know who they are, they know what they stand for and they're going to go to get that clarity regardless of what's in front of them.
Speaker 1:So in many cases, the resiliency that we see in people come because of their faith in a God. Faith in God and a belief in it, this higher being thing. We see this with people that have addictions. They go through a 12 step session.
Speaker 2:Yeah, similar to alcoholics, anonymous.
Speaker 1:That's one of the keys, one of the things is to give up your will to understand there's a higher power, and there is a lot of power in that. When you get to that place, you understand there's a higher power. It does give you resiliency because you can. It's okay, you know how it ends, right. You know how this whole thing ends. You don't have to worry about it crashing burn because you know how the whole thing ends. So we have to add that to resiliency that having a God knowledge in your life can be a tremendous strength. It can also be a fear for several. It depends on how they're living their life, and so it can go against that as well. And it's all about finding that harmony and peace that comes with a God relationship and not the fear of the God relationship, and it can be found.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely you can get that and I have lots of friends who have gone through similar programs and until you have that anchoring link a lot of times you don't, they just never get there- because it's hopelessness, yeah, hopelessness.
Speaker 1:So did you have more things on your list? You want to get to Tony? You have your whole big list over there, yeah we got through the list.
Speaker 2:I may bring a couple other things in later, but what I want to get to is these behaviors that we do that are red flags.
Speaker 1:Yes, one thing before we go there. I know this was on our list. Let's talk about responsibility for a second.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Because we don't get this one on the table. It's kind of hard to set the foundation. One of the rules of resiliency, in fact one of the rules of happiness in life, is that you must come to the place where you are 100% responsible for your happiness and the outcomes of your life, because we spend a lot of time saying, well, you don't understand that they did this and they did that. As long as you're going to live in that world of being a victim of other people's choices affecting your choice, yeah, you'll never be in control.
Speaker 2:You'll never find peace in your life. I have this great quote on the and I'm going to get it wrong. I always get my quotes wrong, but on my wall at work that says until you're willing to take full responsibilities of your thoughts and your actions and those outcomes, you'll never truly be free. Thank you.
Speaker 1:It's true, I ran Dr Taylor Hartman's company the guy that has the color. Yeah, the code code. Yeah, Ran his company for a few years and I remember having lunch with him one time and he said this to me about 100% responsibility. There was some conversations in the office about some people doing some things and I said to him I said, yeah, but she's this, this, this, this and this, and he goes. Oh really, he looked at me with this, really disappointed. I'm like what did I say Something wrong? He goes where's your responsibility?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's your piece and I was like, well, no, you don't understand.
Speaker 1:She's doing this, this and this. And he's like, really, and he wanted to take me to task on this thing. And it woke me up because I thought you know what I do. I blamed and justified why this was going on and he wanted to know where's your ownership and your own responsibility. And I was like, but you know what, stan, she's, I wasn't getting it. Yeah, you weren't getting it it doesn't matter what she does, you don't control her.
Speaker 2:You don't control the People in your life, around you, her actions and all the people. You control yourself.
Speaker 1:So if you want to be happy in marriage, start with being good at being 100% responsible for what you do. Stop worrying about what they do right now. Stop blaming them for your problems. Stop blaming them for all the unhappiness and you decide what your happiness is gonna look like and how you're gonna do it. Own your happiness and therefore it can't be 50-50. It can't be 80-20. No, you have to be 100% responsible for your happiness and accountable to their happiness.
Speaker 1:And so we can't take that off the table, because with anything short of 100% you're not gonna have resiliency.
Speaker 2:I always have. I have a little phrase on the bottom. A lot of the emails I send out says happiness is a choice. It is a choice. It's not something that somehow you find or it's given to you. Well, he's always so you just choose it? No, you choose. You wake up in the morning and, yeah, my knee hurriedly hurts.
Speaker 1:I can choose to be happy, but I'm gonna be happy and this is what I saw in those people when I was reading all those pioneers coming across the West is in their journals. They weren't complaining, they were praising God and I'm like, really, you're out dying in the wilderness, they're praising God.
Speaker 2:You just lost three kids on the journey and you're still praising God. How do you get that mental toughness? Yeah that resiliency. You know it's interesting. Last show we talked with Jamie Brathwaite on Joy Rific and she mentioned you know in hey, even if you're having a bad day, you can still be kind.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's kind of on that same line right Still be happy.
Speaker 2:You always have the choice. You can choose your happiness. You can choose that I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be upbeat today, I'm gonna be kind to others and I'm gonna that's a choice.
Speaker 1:So use this as an example. We look at marriages again and when we'll you know they come into the clinic we're having marriage counseling. I always have one of both of the spouses. They wanna start on the list of things the other person is doing wrong, and we do that for the first session or two and then after that it goes in the trash because it won't matter. What I wanna know is what are you willing to do in a relationship to be valued in the relationship and own that? Because what they decide to do is up to them and you can decide whether you wanna stay with them or not. But you're still gonna have to still own your own happiness and decide what kind of person you're going to be to find joy in your life. You can't just blame your unhappiness on somebody else. Anything you do, more than six months you don't change. You don't like. You deserve it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because, think about it, You're choosing it. You're you're choosing to stay in the situation, you're choosing to keep behaving the way you're behaving, whatever it is just complaining about it and get over it, because you're choosing it and people like what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:I can't just yes, you can. You can own your happiness, all right.
Speaker 2:I want to get that one in there because, boy, I appreciate it. Yeah, that's, it's good stuff.
Speaker 1:Go home when your kid comes, mom, you know it's damn. Billy did say stop. You have to own your accountability and responsibility. I'm gonna know about Billy. I'm gonna know about you. What did you do? What did you do? What did you choose? Same thing to your spouse, right? Okay? So let's talk about these like five, six words that will kill you in life. About being happy Okay, because it gets in the way of you being resilient. Number one Blaming others, victim mentality. Oh, it's called a dirty motive. Dirty motive when somebody comes to me and I'm like, okay, what happened? Like well, they did me a stop. Dirty motive, own it right. Red flag, red flag. So if you're a blamer, stop it. You'll never find happiness.
Speaker 2:If you're blaming your husband if you're, blaming your kids if you're blaming circumstances. You hear it so often, I mean constantly Somebody's blaming somebody else for whatever it is and they're giving up their power for happiness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, they're doing and unfortunately it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a. It's a kind of a Tricky thing when people think that, as they blame, they somehow are propping themselves up. Yeah, but to everybody else. What they don't realize is they're showing their weakness and actually tearing themselves down. Yes, and everybody else around them is looking at them, going wow.
Speaker 1:We don't identify it that way. When somebody's blaming, and just fine, right, we just, we just feel wrong about it. Yeah well, what it is is they're having a dirty motive and we see that. It's like when the toilet paper roll when you go into the bathroom and has like one one square paper that's called a dirty motive.
Speaker 1:Somebody left one square. Really, that's a dirt in our home, as we say. Who left the dirty motive? Right, okay, so blaming others, you'll never find happiness. You're blaming others. Justifying is the second one on there. You'll never find happiness if you justify why you do what you do. How come this happened? Well, because that you're still blaming again.
Speaker 2:That's right, right that Justification is one that Many times, if you take that deep breath and just go in with the straight bold, this is what happened, whatever problem went on. It's so refreshing and it cuts right to the quick of what the problem is, why, and most people respond to that directness with okay, I understand.
Speaker 1:Just confidence in that.
Speaker 2:Because it's worked through it and they see somebody who is going to take care of their own business, who understand the problems that they have, and then they have a plan to deal with them Not oh no. I got there, doggie, my homework, sorry.
Speaker 1:So put the sticky on your window in your bathroom. You get up there and brush your teeth, put it down there. We don't blame, we don't justify dirty motives. If and just call it in your family People around you start doing it, say, stop, You're blame. Well, I have to. No Dirty motives, we're gonna learn how to do it. So, blaming others, that's also making excuses. Okay, Dirty motive. How about we just own it? You know what I got up late? Not well, you know I have my car. My friends, Stop just own it.
Speaker 2:I knew that the traffic was there. I got up late and I hit rush hour and I like to work. I calculated incorrectly and I'm gonna fix that next week.
Speaker 1:I got to fly. I got one of my bucket list things. I got to fly with the Blue Angels, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. We should do a whole show on that. Now you got me all interested in Blue Angels.
Speaker 1:I'm not thinking of resilience, 16 years old. I put it down there. It's nowhere on my list. I want to fly with the Blue Angels. I thought I didn't even go to the academy, the naval academy just so I could get a chance of flying a blue, a blue angel pilot. So I get this ride right. Ride of a lifetime.
Speaker 1:And when it was done I got to go into the briefing room and they got done with their air show. This is where I got this from. They sat in that briefing room. Not one person called anybody out on anything they did wrong not one. They just say, hey, you missed that corner, you flew too close.
Speaker 2:Nope, Every thing I guarantee.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do know where you're going because we work on this constantly in my line of business in the nuclear world on being self-critical and being able to be honest with your own and own it and own your own issues in whatever the event is right. And so when you come in and I guarantee this is what these pilots are doing right they came in and said hey, you know, on that one bank I kind of messed up there, I got a little too close to you, that's something I need to work on, and everything was how I contributed to the performance.
Speaker 1:So think about that. If you're in marriage and you're family and you're going, look, I own this, I saw this, I did that, I lost my cool there, I did this and here's what I'm gonna do to change it, and then do it. When I watched those pilots say, hey, I flew too close, I did this, I was at the wrong speed, and here's what I'm gonna do to change it. And I've got this, I'll take care of it. Think about it. They fly at 450 knots, sometimes 18 inches apart from each other. It's amazing. It's amazing the trust you must have with your wingman.
Speaker 2:You know, I was just gonna mention, as you talked about that, when you talked about the husband the same type of thing if you're in a relationship, how much trust your partner feels, and they go, wow, wow. I know they own that and they're gonna do it.
Speaker 1:And then they did it, they do it Not hard to do.
Speaker 2:Next thing, you know, the trust is getting deeper instead of being broken.
Speaker 1:You got it, you got it. These are the kind of things you have to move towards. So making excuses, blaming others, justifying uh-uh, never gonna find happiness. Red flags If they happen in your life, call each other out on them. That's not how we play. Another one on the list is rebelling and complaining.
Speaker 2:So what's the thing about it?
Speaker 1:If things are going on in your life, you don't like it. So now you're going to submarine somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like that guy that left the one square toilet paper. See what I'm going to do with the kid's bathroom. I'm going to take out their toilet paper roll. Yeah, we submarine them.
Speaker 2:We always see this in the in the light. Of you know somebody will come up and they'll find a problem on somebody and say, hey, you know you kind of mess this up. I see it in my sports team all the time. I'll be yelling one kid hey, you need to be, you know, cutting through the pack. Well, tommy's not moving either, right?
Speaker 1:I'm like you didn't hear what does that got to do with Tommy.
Speaker 2:I didn't talk about Tommy moving. I'm talking about you moving Right Own your own, your business.
Speaker 1:This is why we have problems with resiliency today. Yeah, because, like kids, everybody gets a blue ribbon. Nobody has to lose, nobody does anything hard anymore, nobody sacrifices anymore, nobody has to give of something of value, nobody has to realize that, hey, I had a learning experience.
Speaker 2:I messed something up. I got an opportunity to learn.
Speaker 1:We try and take that all away from him and unfortunately, parents I'm calling you out on this one we're taking that away from our children and not letting them grow by doing hard things.
Speaker 2:Got to do the hard things it's okay, yeah, and you cannot let them just justify away the loss. I mean, I remember.
Speaker 1:My friends aren't doing it. My friends don't have to move along, my friends don't need it.
Speaker 2:It was the ref's fault. My kids come home all the time. Well, the ref, the roughing was terrible. I'm like well, weren't you the ones who didn't score any touchdowns? I need to go find the.
Speaker 1:I need to go find the quote again. It was like Vince Lombardi or somebody. It was during one of the Super Bowls and the the star quarterback was out there and he just like he, first five times they had the ball he messed up. He'd come off the field and go coach. Look, the guy ran the wrong pattern. The next one's, the grass is slippery. The next one, he benched him and when asked he said you just benched your guy. But the other guy he says yeah, cause he lost the heart of a champion. Like what do you mean? Heart? That's football. Football has grass. Guys run wrong routes. People jump your your, your your run. People get by your blockers.
Speaker 2:That's football the heart of the champions. Get through all of those adversities and figure out a way to succeed Right.
Speaker 1:And you don't do that unless you have resiliency. That's right, right If you learn to fails which have. The next one on the list is finding fault. And here's an interesting one Doubt, doubt, doubt. Submarines resiliency, doubt, doubt.
Speaker 2:And I think that doubt is a lot of times that doubt prevents people from gaining resiliency, and we talked earlier in the show about the people who are afraid to go try something new.
Speaker 1:Right Afraid to do something.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I'm not going to be able to do this. I'm not going to be able. I'm not good enough. That's a big catch. Fridge turned somebody thinking I'm not enough, not enough. That's that doubt.
Speaker 1:Maybe today you're not, but you can't be tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, get step, take the next step. That's the faith You've got to have, faith in yourself that, hey, I can take this step and I'm going to learn. It doesn't matter whether I get it tomorrow or the next day. I'm going to keep making those steps.
Speaker 1:And that's what it's about. Right, not giving up, because, remember, you're not failing, you're experiencing. I got a great story for you coming up, oh yeah, I always like what Tony's got a good story.
Speaker 2:That's all I have. Well, it's a good story, it is.
Speaker 1:We're talking about resiliency, the things that's summery and the things that's the qualities you need to have if you want to raise kids that are resilient and if you want to have resiliency in your relationships, which is the route to true happiness and joy. As you learn to mold by the challenges of life, don't let them get the best of you. There's easy ways to get around it. You just got to choose it, got to decide.
Speaker 2:You got to choose it, you got to decide.
Speaker 1:And that doesn't mean bad things don't happen and horrible things happen to a lot of very good people. That's not the issue. It's about what you do about it and how you can adapt your way through it. Right, it's about coming off the top, not being bitter, but getting better, better, baby, all right. It's resiliency. It's Will and Tony. Let's chat with Will and Tony If you'd like to join the show. 607-414-chat, 607-414-chat. Or you can email us. Let's chat with Will and Tony at gmailcom. That's it.
Speaker 1:See you back in two Common sense advice for life, Helping with self-awareness, family and relationships in a complex world. Now here's Will Kesley and Tony Patek. Welcome back to the show. I'm here. Got a few minutes left before we got hit the hard break.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I got a good story for you Hit me. So I was a scout master for like 20 years for the Boy Scouts America. Never knew and great time, wonderful time. So hours and hours in the mountains. So this past year I have a group of youth and we're going up on this long hike, and these are young kids, I mean we're talking 11-year-old, 11-12-year-olds, 13, 14.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're small and we got them 20, 30-pound packs on and it's a pretty grueling hike. And we're hiking up and I have this one kid and I always bring up the back of the trail, back of the pack, because no kid left behind, right, I'm like a Marine, the Marine of Boy Scouts America. So we're hiking up the trail and this one kid he's flagging hard and he's going down. And at one point in the trail we're about two thirds up the hike he just sits down, flat sits down.
Speaker 1:I'm done, I'm done.
Speaker 2:He just makes the I'm done and I'm like, oh man, I'm up here with these kids.
Speaker 1:I got this kid who's basically out of the Let me guess what he needed was a refill with his cell phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, we needed some video games. I didn't have any, so I didn't know what to do. So I get talking to him, I encourage him, help him out, finally get him back up mentally. And we're working on, we were literally working on all right, let's take 10 steps. We're going to go 10 steps up to that tree and we'll take a little break and then we'll do another 10 and we'll get there. And that was how broken down we were, to the point of we were taking just the next step. Let's get through this next moment, right.
Speaker 2:So we do that for the last mile, mile and a half of the trail and we come over this crest and it's a beautiful hike. You come over this last crest and this gorgeous mountain lake opens up in front of you. And the lake opens up and this scout, biggest smile on his face and he just says I did it. I did it. And I tell you, I bet that's one of the first times in that, in that kid's life, that he did something hard that he was proud of, and he became a little more resilient that day. And I think that's what we're talking about. You're going to be out there in hard times. You're going to be out there in the tough things, and things are coming at you and life seems horrible. Take one more step to that next tree. Just keep taking that step. Get better, not bitter, and keep working through it and you'll find on the other side a great satisfaction and great joy and happiness.
Speaker 1:That's it. There's only a handful of things you can do that make you happy and joyful and make life fulfilling. We talked about them today. We did so. Thank you, tony, good to see you, as always. Go be happy. Catch you next week. I will be here. Here's talk 107.9.